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Register Studies: Online-First Articles

And tonight, shocking revelations about TV news broadcasts

A hybrid spoken/written register, or a unique register?

ORCID logo | Northern Arizona University
ORCID logo | Northern Arizona University
 | Northern Arizona University
TV news broadcasts (TVNBs) represent an unusual mix of oral/literate situational characteristics. In addition, TVNBs have shifted historically to become increasingly focused on ‘soft’ human-interest stories. Thus, we have good reason to predict that present-day TVNBs will incorporate a hybrid blend of oral and literate lexico-grammatical characteristics.
The present study explores this possibility through a corpus-based analysis of TVNBs compared to conversation and newspaper writing. In part, the results confirm these prior expectations. Surprisingly, though, a more detailed analysis shows that this mixture of situational characteristics has given rise to a unique grammatical style of discourse rather than a hybrid style. In particular, TVNBs can be analyzed to a large extent as main clauses where the finite verb has been deleted. This discourse style is interesting because it cannot be attributed to challenging production circumstances. Rather, the functional motivation seems related to creating a perception of urgency and excitement.
Keywords: TV news broadcasts, oral/literate register comparisons, key feature methods, historical change, non-canonical reduced structures
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Situational/communicative characteristics of Television News Broadcasts (TVNBs)
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Quantitative-linguistic analysis of TV News Broadcasts
  • 5.Non-Canonical Reduced Structures in TVNBs: The rest of the story
  • 6.Discussion: Functional motivations of the unique grammatical characteristics of TVNBs
  • Notes
  • References
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